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Pickled Lemons

A preserved lemon preparation using vinegar, spices, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pickled Lemons

Oven, in the book's wordsA very slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the lemons into quarters and place them in a lined saucepan.

  2. Add vinegar, garlic, nutmeg, cloves, mace, cayenne pepper, mustard, and salt.

Cook and store

  1. Boil the mixture for 20 minutes.

  2. Transfer the contents to a large earthenware jar and cover it tightly.

  3. Shake the jar well every day.

  4. After six weeks, the pickle will be ready for use.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lemons
Provide the fruit that is pickled, softening and absorbing the brine over time.
White vinegar
Acts as the acidic pickling liquid that preserves the lemons and sharpens their flavour.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out and seasons the brine, helping preserve the lemons.
Cayenne pepper
Adds heat that carries through the pickling liquid into the lemons.

The step that matters

Shake the jar well every day. Daily shaking keeps the spices and salt evenly distributed through the vinegar so every lemon pickles uniformly instead of unevenly at the top or bottom.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, vinegar, clove, garlic, nutmeg, pepper, mustard):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, vinegar, clove, garlic, nutmeg, pepper, mustard. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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